Houston leaders hope to lure Amazon with tech, train, teachers

Zavian Tate, a student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, pushes a large Amazon Dash button. The Dash buttons are part of the city's campaign to lure Amazon's second headquarters﻿.

Zavian Tate, a student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, pushes a large Amazon Dash button. The Dash buttons are part of the city's campaign to lure Amazon's second headquarters﻿.

Photo: Brynn Anderson, STF

Photo: Brynn Anderson, STF

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Zavian Tate, a student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, pushes a large Amazon Dash button. The Dash buttons are part of the city's campaign to lure Amazon's second headquarters﻿.

Zavian Tate, a student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, pushes a large Amazon Dash button. The Dash buttons are part of the city's campaign to lure Amazon's second headquarters﻿.

Photo: Brynn Anderson, STF

Houston leaders hope to lure Amazon with tech, train, teachers

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Houston's pitch for Amazon's $5 billion second headquarters hinges on a four-mile stretch on the Metro light rail line running from downtown to the Texas Medical Center, an area city leaders are calling the innovation corridor.

It's a section of Houston that includes some of the city's largest companies, Rice University, tech startups, venture capital, private equity shops, museums, green-spaces, financial and professional services and plenty of restaurants and housing, according to a document outlining the city's confidential proposal to Amazon.

Local leaders have given Amazon its choice of undisclosed sites within the so-called innovation corridor, an attractive zone they hope can overcome some of Houston's macro-level drawbacks, including low levels of mass transit ridership across a broad swath of the city. The corridor is, according to the document drafted by the Greater Houston Partnership, "the center of a power social and economic convergence."

"The corridor offers close access to two international airports, three interstates, 3 million workers, plus access to key game changers in business and an unparalleled array of amenities," city leaders said in the document.

In the bid, local leaders highlighted Houston's most prominent industries, including oil and gas, health care and manufacturing, saying these more traditional businesses would benefit from a partnership with a leading technology companies, and Amazon could, in turn, tackle some of the biggest modern challenges, such as the sustainability of the world's energy resources and climate change.

"What disrupters need is access to the traditional industry model and the problems it creates that they can't imagine or conceive of from the outside," said Bob Harvey, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership, the group spearheading Houston's bid for Amazon. "People might say what interest would Amazon have in oil and gas, but energy is the issue of the day."

Also among the document's 32 bullet points is the city's ethnic diversity, nearly 100,000 people who work in technology-related fields, low local taxes, eclectic neighborhoods and restaurants, a low cost of living.

The city's diversity, Harvey argued, should appeal to a company that wants to attract millennial workers and to a tech industry that has come under fire for its ethnic uniformity, particularly in Silicon Valley.

"As Amazon seeks to diversify its ranks at the executive, manager and professional levels, there is no better place to locate in Houston," city leaders said.